Once twice thrice removed

How are we to develop a viable millennial and global belief system^[1]?  How are we to sift transcendent from transient truths^[2]?

Whenever confronted with a complex problem, a web of interwoven problems, a welter of conflicting facts and opinions^[3], you can step back from and out of the problem.  What is its context?  Take it back to first principles and what does it look like?

That is not a universal approach.  Many choose to focus on the detail perhaps in the belief that if you understand the detail the wider picture will resolve itself.  Perhaps they take the context for granted or do not consider it to be within their brief or competence?  Or perhaps it is because stepping out can be very unsettling?

The problem we are confronting in this work is dauntingly large and complex; developing a contemporary belief system with global applicability is at best a vainglorious endeavour.

To have any chance of making any headway we need to step out and back.  We need to remove ourselves once, twice, thrice, and more.  We need to step out along a whole range of dimensions - geographical, political, cultural, historical, moral, spiritual, temporal, and more.

To ensure that the belief system is robust and enduring it needs to be based on as solid a foundation as it is humanly possible to give it.  If it is to be disseminated widely it needs to be meticulously explicit leaving no truths and values implied, so that it may be debated and understood by individuals with diverse mindsets.  This may mean having to state what appears to you to be obvious and elementary.

To be rationally debatable the positions we take should have a basis in reason and not in prejudice.  At the very least we should make our predispositions explicit and not pretend that our positions are founded on objective truth where that is not the case.  That way any ensuing debate may be focused on the means to the ends rather than being hijacked by disagreement over ends.

To engage people we must engage not only their minds, but more importantly the other dimensions and needs^[4] of human beings - the emotional, social and spiritual dimensions.

Let us not simply rationalise our predispositions as so often happens when people claim objectivity on matters that are close to their hearts or self interests.

We must step out of our homes, our neighbourhoods, our cities, and our nations.  We must step off the planet and think universally.  We must step out of our cultures and belief systems.  We must step out of our specialist disciplines.  We must temporarily look beyond the personal fires we are all constantly fighting, and sweep over the whole rather than focusing on the detail.

All this is much easier said than done.  Our prejudices are as much part of us as our noses are, and equally difficult to see without some kind of mirror - whether a physical or cultural mirror.  Often it is not until you have internalised another culture that you become aware of your first culture and the many things you once took for granted.  It is the "mirror" of the second culture that allows you to see the first.  The vast majority of people are without such a mirror, and to them culture, ideology and unreasonable prejudices are things that "other" people have; and enlightenment, truth, and God are always on "our" side.

We must step out of the short term human timeframe, the timeframe of the moment, the timeframe of a corporate financial report^[5], the timeframe of an electoral cycle, the timeframe of a human lifetime.  Look down on time from on high.  Trace it back to its origins; peer far into the future^[6].

We must remove ourselves from the immediacy of our own existences.  We must step back along all dimensions not once, but twice, thrice, and more; as far as we have to to reach the point where we find the big picture^[7] that encompasses and unites us all.  It is from there that we can then return home to define what matters today and beyond.